Friday, 4 February 2011

Quotes of the Week: From a fornicating dung hill rooster to reversing a ferret...

The Sun on the Appeal Court ruling that stopped the press naming a sportsman said by the paper to be a love cheat: "Yesterday was the day Britain became a judicial banana republic. The nation that created the rule of law bent its knee to a sportsman who fornicates his way through life like a dung hill rooster."

Independent editor-in-chief Simon Kelner: "It’s all changed round here in the wake of the rather unfortunate incidents that saw the football pundits Andy Gray and Richard Keys lose their jobs. Walk past the sports desk these days and no longer will you hear ribald jokes and manly laughter, merely the tap-tap-tapping of the keyboards punctuated by the odd comment from the sports editor about how much more exciting women’s tennis is these days."

AA Gill in the Sunday Times:"Andrew Neil continues to be the most winningly unlikely TV star, the thinking woman’s Piers Morgan. . . It was Neil who brought me onto this paper; indeed, he gave me this column. He used to say he was a real Scot and I was a reel Scot, meaning I was an effete Edinburgh toff, while he was the salt of the Paisley earth. He went to grammar school and Glasgow University; I went to council junior school, failed the 11+ and went on to rehab."

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, in the Sunday Timeson proposals to stop the press naming crime suspects until they are charged: “It sounds like a simple and easy measure but it’s a complex issue. The public are entitled to know when someone is arrested and not naming people who are arrested only leads to speculation and rumour in place of absolute fact."Financial Times editor Lionel Barber giving the Annual Hugh Cudlipp Lecture: "Aside from the lead taken by the Guardian, which was followed by the FT, BBC and Independent, the rest of the newspaper industry took a pass on the News of the World phone-hacking story – almost certainly because they too were involved in 'dark arts'. Indeed it took a foreign newspaper – the New York Times – to break fresh ground after an investigation lasting many months. For all that period and more, a conspiracy of silence ruled Fleet Street."

Sir Harold Evans on phone hacking on the Today programme: "An obnoxious abomination and has nothing whatsoever to do with investigative journalism."Stephen Glover in the Independent praises the Guardian's Nick Davies for his reporting of phone hacking: "Mr Davies stuck to his guns and bravely took on News International. I do not share his views about the complete dysfunctionality of the tabloid Press, but it is impossible not to admire him. I once teased him for being 'the sort of journalist who can find a scandal in a jar of tadpoles'. This has turned out to be some jar."

Telegraph chief political commentator Peter Orborne on anti-Muslim postings on his article supporting Baroness Warsi: "Some 1,238 comments were generally anti-Muslim, approximately 200 virulently so. I recognise, of course, that these are not the voices of ordinary Telegraph readers: discussions of this sort are regularly infiltrated by extremists. Nevertheless, the majority of those who left comments seemed comfortable labelling an entire section of British society undesirable because of the actions of a tiny and unrepresentative minority."

Liz Jones in the Mail: "Personal confidences and tragedies spew from me like a flood. The ­written word comes first. My husband ­announcing on an idyllic island off the ­African coast he had cheated on me with a work-­experience girl evoked the ­following emotions in the ­following order: ‘I can write this up ­tomorrow and it will make a two-parter!’ And then: ‘How could you cheat on me when I have just spent £26,000 on this holiday?’ "

Tom Junod in Esquire on the New York Times' executive editor Bill Keller and his relationships with the founder of WikiLeaks: "What Bill Keller really wants the public to know is that when he climbed into bed with Julian Assange, he made sure to wear a condom, manufactured from the impermeable rubber of his own distaste."

Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph after it led on a WikiLeaks inspired story about Libya: "A while back I questioned how interesting the material released by WikiLeaks was. Excuse me while I reverse my ferret."

1 comment:

Paul Linford
said...

David Cameron's official spokesman, asked what the Prime Minister thought about Sally Bercow’s contention that the Speaker had become a sex symbol: "Clearly, the Prime Minister and Mrs Bercow have slightly different relationships with the Speaker."

About Me

I am a freelance journalist based in the UK and was deputy editor of Press Gazette, the journalists' magazine, from 1993 until 2006. I want to give an independent view on media matters.
You can contact me with stories, ideas and comments by email at jon.slattery369@btinternet.com You can also follow me on Twitter @jonslattery